Asparagus! 2261Gregory Morrow" I have shopped in the Safeway you mention if I'm in the neighborhood and happen to think of something I...
I know I've seen asparagus from Mexico around here too this time of year, maybe that's where my latest batches came from. In summer, it can come from closer areas. Some of the nicest asparagus I've seen in recent years came from New Jersey, of all places. I guess there was a reason New Jersey was called the "Garden State".
The "normal" price for asparagus at my local Safeway supermarket is $3.99 a pound. I believe that is what I saw it at today. I won't buy it at that price (or anywhere near it). That price is not necessarily indicative of the price for the region as a whole. I live in downtown Washington, DC. I believe Safeway sets prices store by store. But during sales, prices are uniform region wide. The sales flyers always say "save up to love" because the normal price varies by store.
I came up with the method by trial and error. Just so you avoid the errors, here's the logic and the mistakes.
If you put the middle tender portion and the tough lower portion together to cook, you can't separate it later. I've run the resulting soup through the food mill to remove the fibrous material, and it ends up being way too thin. One then has to rely totally on butter, flour, and cream for the enrichment.
If you just blend it like crazy (normal blender or stick blender) but don't run it through the food mill, the soup is way too fibrous. You end up chopping the tough fibers really short, but they are still there.
By keeping the middle and lower portions separate, you can use the food mill to remove the fibrous material from the lower portion, but keep all of the middle portion. That gives the soup a lot of body without a lot of fiber. Your method of course retains the middle portion in its entirety also for body (but doesn't make any use of the lower portion for flavor).
Tomorrow I'm off cooking in another direction entirely... that's why I was in the Safeway today, getting the fixings for New England Boiled Dinner, or what I call Corned Beef and Cabbage Deluxe. More root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, beets), mostly.
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